"Yes, Ella--for he would be sure to do away these cursed distinctions we know so much of! Then I should have no need for feeling as I do, when I shut your gate after you, and go on to the shed where the shoemaker's widow lives with her son, whom people are so very kind, so exceeding kind, as to call a poet. Ella, neither you nor I will live to see it--but the old things SHALL pass away on this earth, and new powers reign here ere long. And then, in that blessed day when Justice shall rule, a girl like you may walk up this village street with a boy even like _me_, and take his arm, and speak with him as an equal, and none shall stare and think the condescension wonderful. As it is--walk alone--go on before me--though you are weary and cold, I am not fit to support or to shelter you." He opened the gate for her, for they stood now before the parsonage--as she passed through he said, more gently, "I am sorry that I threw your cross away; it was a violent, and passionate, and childish act. Besides, you prized it--for your mother's sake; you _love_ your mother. And no good will ever come of its being torn away from you. There was no cause for treating you so." "Yes, there was, George--don't mind--good _has_ come of it already." "Oh, Ella--how?" "I'm ready, this moment, to bear another cross, to take it up and bear it, if God will." "Woe to the human hand that lays a heavier cross on your shoulder than that I threw away from you." "Good-night, George." "Good-night, Ella." "George, you don't believe _I_ feel as you say people do about being seen walking or talking--with--you? I am, indeed, very proud of you, and--" "Yes--I don't doubt it, since you say so--you're proud _of_ me, though I can't see why. But you're not proud _for_ me, nor _with_ me." "Yes--I am." "No! no! you don't understand what you're talking about. I'm glad you don't--if I called 'the whole world a cheat, and all men liars,' you wouldn't say yea and amen to that?" "No; for I could prove to you that you mistook all about you. Oh, if you only knew how--" "No more--good-night. You are not like other people, Ella, or we could not speak as we do together." II. A dull November morning--rain had fallen in great quantities during the night, as George Waldron had predicted, and clouds yet covered the entire heaven. Amid the leafless forest trees that covered the mountain side, stood here and there a few evergreens, like ghosts, robed in funereal gloom--the wind was fierce and cold--the waters of the lake rolled high and furiously, they dashed madly on the beach--they rolled far back and up, with maniac force. The boy was there again, standing on the seashore--the sun had not yet risen--he stood where the sunlight had fallen the night before on Ella, but the light that had enveloped her as a glory-robe, was not on him. He looked pale, and very anxious, and from the rock where she had stood he restlessly and curiously scanned every wave that broke upon the beach.